Highlights of the NTSB’s DCA Hearings

It’s understandable that even the geekiest of airplane geeks didn’t have enough time in their week to listen to the more than 30 hours of testimony created when the NTSB began its recent public investigation of the events surrounding the January midair collision near the approach end of Runway 33 at Washington, DC’s Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA).

NTSB News Talk has made learning the essential details easier by condensing all three days into three separate episodes, totaling slightly less than five hours. You’ll find the links at the bottom of this story.

While five hours is still quite a bit of time, we think you’ll find it time well spent listening and learning not only about the threats that existed at National Airport on and before January 29, but also how the NTSB approached the interview process in its search for recommendations to help prevent another similar tragedy

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There was an air of sadness that hung over the hearings, certainly, for the 67 lives that were snatched away that night, but also by the sense of inevitability many witnesses expressed.  Some said they knew a collision was going to happen sooner or later.

Shortly after the collision, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy closed helicopter routes over the Potomac that brought them anywhere close to landing aircraft. The testimony spoke primarily to the failures of the FAA and the US Army to address safety threats that some witnesses had previously warned about.

Here are a few, but not all, of the topics that stood out …

• The FAA took no action when users suggested that the proximity of the helicopter routes to fixed-wing aircraft demanded that Army helicopters be given alternate routes away from aircraft. The accident occurred when both aircraft were just 278 feet above the ground.
• DCA tower controllers said FAA management regularly expected them to handle an increasing number of airliners. Numbers that at times exceeded their capabilities. There was, however, no actionable response from the FAA to those calls for additional resources.
• Over the past decade, FAA air traffic managers at DCA were changed out about once a year on average, creating a void in continuity with other management staff.
• NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the controller working the local control position on the night of the accident admitted that prior to the collision, they were starting to feel overwhelmed. A pilot the investigators spoke to said while listening on the tower frequency that night, the controller seemed “exceptionally busy” and that they were “not instilling a lot of confidence.”
• There were known inaccuracies in many of the 12^th Battalion’s Blackhawk altimeters. Normally, not a huge concern under VFR conditions, but in the DC area they represented an accident waiting to happen when separation was regularly measured in just 10s of feet.
• The Blackhawk’s ADS-B system was not operational on the night of the accident. A post-accident inspection discovered that none of the 12th’s helicopters had a working ADS-B.
• Blackhawk pilots regularly flew missions wearing Night Vision Goggles. No one is quite clear about whether those view-limiting devices added to the helicopter pilots’ confusion that night, only that they may have.
• Local helicopter pilots admitted that when approaching DCA along the Potomac from the north, fixed-wing traffic circling to runway 33 could be difficult to pinpoint. No one knows which aircraft the accident helicopter crew was focused on when they called “Traffic in Sight.”

Let us know what you think.

Rob Mark